Judge Chin says no to Google

U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin put the kibosh on Google’s quest to become the publishing world’s ‘daddy’.

In case you had not heard… Google set out to digitize and essentially archive all of the world’s books, creating the world’s biggest digital book library, and all for $125 million.

Digital rights groups and authors are among those celebrating. Their concern… had the judge agreed to the settlement, Google would have been allowed to own and control all of the world’s works in the form of digital books, while violating authors’ copyrights. Authors would have to opt-out of the program.

According to Jack Korba of the Intellectual Property Brief,

The opt-out system that the settlement created exempted Google from future infringements that some authors may not be aware of as of now.  Such protection would definitely contribute to Google’s monopoly over the digitization of books and would potentially affect authors that were not adequately represented by the class representatives.

Some have argued… What’s innovation without breaking a few laws? I bet if Google, or some other entity, hit them in just the right place… they might think otherwise.

Anyway…

Want the backstory? Check out Publisher’s Weekly article providing their perspective on what the decision means for the stakeholders: authors, publishers, libraries and Google.

 

 

 

 

 

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